I’ve recently read that it wasn’t an apple that tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but a fig. And I fully agree. Few things are as tempting, and in my opinion, it’s one of the most seductive fruits in the world. Once ripened on the tree, the juicy bulbs beckon you to bite into their lush flesh and enjoy the sweet succulence that awaits inside.

Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but figs are really flowers and not fruits. They’re actually magnificent inverted flowers that bloom internally. Read on; it gets much better. These flowers have a very special relationship with their pollinators, fig wasps. Fig trees and these tiny little creatures, no more than one or two millimeters long, are co-dependent. The teeny female wasps’ sole task is to crawl into an unripe fig, pollinate with pollen carried from other figs, lay eggs, and then die…